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AMD spins dual-core Phenom Cartwheel

K10 goes budget

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AMD has unveiled two new dual-core Athlons intended for low-cost home PCs.

On Monday, the beleaguered chip manufacturer rolled out what it's calling the 2.5GHz Athlon X2 7550 and the 2.7GHz Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition. Previously, dual-core Athlons used AMD's aging K8 microprocessor design, but these chips benefit from the newer K10 (aka "10h") architecture at the heart of its Phenom processors: the triple-core Phenom X3 and the quad-core Phenom X4.

Both dual-core chips include a 256KB Level 1 data cache, 1MB of L2 cache (512KB per core), and a 2MB shared L3 cache. And both support HyperTransport 3.0.

The 2.7GHz X2 7750 Black Edition is priced at $79. And the 2.5GHz X2 7550 is unpriced, as it's available only to PC manufacturers.

Like the triple- and quad-core Phenom models, these X2 7000 series chips are manufactured on AMD's older 65nm process. They're meant for low-cost desktops based on AMD's "Cartwheel" platform. Cartwheel also includes AMD's 780G chipset, built around ATI Radeon 3200 integrated graphics. ®